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Mangonia Park

The sign indicates that the Jai-Alai
fronton would be built on this
location in Mangonia Park, 1955.

Courtesy HSPBC.

In 1947 a group of white residents in a rural area near Australian Avenue—then called Voss Road—decided to incorporate to avoid being absorbed by the City of West Palm Beach to the southeast. They were separated from the City of Riviera Beach to the north by a canal. The homeowners on Voss Road barely met the requirement of one square mile of land, as most of the area east of the road was then swamp. Charles Roebuck prepared a charter for the Town of Magnolia Park, but the name had been taken. Instead the town became Mangonia Park, for the mango groves common in the area since the early 1900s.

Mangonia Park has become increasingly inhabited by commercial and industrial businesses. For 40 years, the town’s main attraction was the Palm Beach Jai-Alai Fronton, which opened in 1955, was destroyed by fire in 1978, rebuilt, and closed for good in 1994.